Last Girl Ghosted

Houses are like people. They have memories, and energy. They wait. They wilt from neglect. They sicken and decay. They haunt, and they are haunted.

Even though we can’t always have affection for every person we meet, we can always treat every person with kindness.

People only stay in your life if they want to. So often, they just go away. And there’s really nothing you can do.

A word I read comes to mind: solastalgia, a miserable tangle of solace, desolation, and nostalgia.

The past is gone. The future is a fantasy. There is only the breath, the moment.

Arguments are almost never about the thing they’re about.

These folks thought that society had already collapsed. They had dropped out, walked away from—” “The world of men,” I finish. “That’s what my father always said. That the end was already underway.” “Some days it’s hard to argue with that,” says Joy. I think of the fires raging, the virus that’s spreading, the category five hurricanes that have been ravaging coastlines, war all over the world, famine, drought. Maybe he was right.

All this time, she’d wondered how she could live knowing what darkness awaited. With Shawn, she realized all of it, light and dark, life and death, was one terrible, beautiful mingle, and that the whole point was to just live well, while you could.

When did the news become worse than any dystopian fiction we could imagine?

Her T-shirt reads affably: Don’t like my attitude? Dial 1-800-F*CK-YOU.

I think how we treat any one person is how we treat the world, how we treat ourselves.

So, when you’re done with someone, you can potentially discard him, and realistically expect to never see him or anyone he knows again.

Nobody calls anymore, says Jax. It takes too much time. I hate that cold, stripped-down way we communicate now. I want voices, the nuances of meaning inherent in tone.

Don’t you dare say that. Not ever. Truly. That’s so fucked on so many levels. You are who you are because of everything that made you and that’s beautiful. You’re a survivor. I am the storm? Damn straight.

When lost wants to stay lost, sometimes you have no choice but to let it go.

But I think how we treat any one person is how we treat the world, how we treat ourselves.

want to reach for you, begging, the man I thought you were. And then I think of my mother. Was that how it was for her? Always reaching for someone who was long gone, who perhaps was never there at all. Just a fantasy.

love—grown-up love—has to be conditional, right? Otherwise it means you don’t love yourself.

Others still see the crow as a symbol of transformation. When he shows up in your life, get ready for change.

But Jax’s mother Miranda taught us both how to save and invest. Work for your money, and then make your money work for you. That way you never need to rely on any man.

For me, there’s a tension to all encounters, even the good ones.

The ability to be quiet with someone, there’s a delicious intimacy to that.

Bookish men in glasses, people who read and think, who hike, meditate.

Would that be so bad? Solitude. It’s not the worst thing in life.

A name is like a gift, he told her.

You can choose and create the life you want. You are the author of your reality.

Nothing you buy will make you feel as good as money in the bank.

feel like when my mother died, she took with her the Mia I saw when she looked at me. I could never find that girl in my own reflection. To Mom, I was special—bright, powerful, beautiful—her angel. To the rest of the world, I was just a girl. Small for my age, shy, passingly pretty, smart enough. Just Mia.